Show HN: macOS app that shows how full the urine tank on the ISS is

#1

Post by jaennaet » Thu, Dec 19, 2024, 6:40 PM UTC

Yes, the urine tank on the International Space Station. In real time, I might add!

This uses the official live telemetry stream from Lightstreamer, although – at least at the moment – it doesn't eg. check what the signal status is so telemetry might be down altogether and you'd never know. Maybe in v0.2.

Native menu bar application, so it doesn't require running a copy of Chromium and Node to show you two emojis and a percentage.

I got the idea for this when somebody linked to https://iss-mimic.github.io/Mimic/ joking about how we can see in real time how full the urine tank on the ISS is; after I understood that there's a public live telemetry stream I knew in my heart I had to do something very silly with it. I've also finally been learning Swift and macOS programming in general and I figured this'd be an excellent first Swift project, so here we all are.

Just as an aside, the "ISS Mimic" project itself is very interesting and worth checking out (https://github.com/ISS-Mimic/Mimic). I'm in no way, shape or form affiliated with them and they have no idea who I am.

Show HN: macOS app that shows how full the urine tank on the ISS is
github.com

Re: Show HN: macOS app that shows how full the urine tank on the ISS is

#2

Post by galfarragem » Thu, Dec 19, 2024, 6:59 PM UTC

That's why I come to HN... There is always something that surprises you!

Re: Show HN: macOS app that shows how full the urine tank on the ISS is

#3

Post by jaennaet » Thu, Dec 19, 2024, 7:16 PM UTC

galfarragem wrote: post #2

That's why I come to HN... There is always something that surprises you!

It really is kind of surprising in addition to being very silly; there's something great about the fact that we live in a world where I can use realtime telemetry data from a space station's toilets for a joke.

Wasn't quite sure if the local crowd was going to be receptive to this sort of tomfoolery (and I'm posting this with my "non-serious" alter ego with no history here), but at least the post isn't dead yet.

Re: Show HN: macOS app that shows how full the urine tank on the ISS is

#4

Post by vednig » Thu, Dec 19, 2024, 10:02 PM UTC

This is cool, when can we expect a Windows version?

Re: Show HN: macOS app that shows how full the urine tank on the ISS is

#5

Post by jaennaet » Fri, Dec 20, 2024, 12:00 AM UTC

vednig wrote: post #4

This is cool, when can we expect a Windows version?

Unfortunately I will have to leave that to outside contributors (who will surely be legion.)

Re: Show HN: macOS app that shows how full the urine tank on the ISS is

#6

Post by umutdev » Fri, Dec 20, 2024, 12:05 AM UTC

this kind of thing used to be made for touchbar

Re: Show HN: macOS app that shows how full the urine tank on the ISS is

#7

Post by dattiimo » Fri, Dec 20, 2024, 12:25 AM UTC

I haven’t tried the app but love the randomness of being able to view the level of the piss tank on the ISS. We need more apps like this.

Re: Show HN: macOS app that shows how full the urine tank on the ISS is

#8

Post by getwiththeprog » Fri, Dec 20, 2024, 3:28 AM UTC

jaennaet wrote: post #3

galfarragem wrote: post #2

That's why I come to HN... There is always something that surprises you!

It really is kind of surprising in addition to being very silly; there's something great about the fact that we live in a world where I can use realtime telemetry data from a space station's toilets for a joke. Wasn't quite sure if the local crowd was going to be receptive to this sort of tomfoolery (and I'm posting this with my "non-serious" alter ego with no history here), but at least the post isn't dead yet.

This kind of joke is great, as a beginner programmer you get your app and I get to learn to view the ISS telemetry data.

For those like me not on iOS, you can view the web page of info at https://iss-mimic.github.io/Mimic/ and find the Urine Tank level under "NODE3000005 Urine Tank [%]" which is currently at a value of 31.

Re: Show HN: macOS app that shows how full the urine tank on the ISS is

#9

Post by jaennaet » Fri, Dec 20, 2024, 3:44 AM UTC

dattiimo wrote: post #7

I haven’t tried the app but love the randomness of being able to view the level of the piss tank on the ISS. We need more apps like this.

I absolutely agree!

While some people maybe have a bit of a tendency to treat programming and computing in general as Very Serious business and only really ever work on Very Serious projects, I'm obviously in the camp that encourages doing frivolous silly things for equally frivolous silly reasons.

And there really is something about the fact that it's not only feasible but downright trivial to bang out an application in an afternoon that reads realtime telemetry data from a frickin' space station's toilets, that's just… I don't know, delightful? Sort of amazing?

Re: Show HN: macOS app that shows how full the urine tank on the ISS is

#10

Post by jaennaet » Fri, Dec 20, 2024, 3:56 AM UTC

umutdev wrote: post #6

this kind of thing used to be made for touchbar

Interesting, I'll need to dig that up. pISSStream got its first feature request and it was touch bar support, and I can't just say "no" to that. Turned out however that Apple apparently doesn't officially support having your app on the touch bar unless it's in focus, but I've gathered there's a kluge (which I'm not sure even works on current macOS versions) that involves using a private framework and API, and which is doubly kluge-y to use from Swift because it has no equivalent for extern, so you need to add an ObjC/C header and a bridge header thingamajig to your project.

That of course only made me more determined to git'r'done, I'll be damned if I let Apple stand in the way of a joke.